The Chase

By: Tamara Gestetner, LMFT

There’s a half-packed suitcase open on my bedroom floor right now. I keep walking past it and stopping, like I need to check that it’s real. Because a part of me still can’t believe I am doing this; that is, flying to a different city to record my podcast in a new studio where no one knows me yet.

Nobody made me do this. There’s no network telling me to go or giving me a check to cover the flight. I do it because a few years ago having a talk show was a pipe dream that I was almost too embarrassed to articulate to anyone. And now I’m packing my suitcase and getting ready to fulfill that dream.

I want Talk2Tamara to be the biggest podcast in the world. Not one of the good ones. Not a nice niche following. The biggest.

I’ve said that out loud to maybe three people in my life. And I’ve watched all three of them try very hard not to look at me like I’ve lost it. I don’t blame them. I’ve looked at myself that way plenty of times, usually at two in the morning, right after a recording that I think went well and then immediately start wondering if well is ever going to be enough.

This week I had a guest on who has actually lived what I’m only chasing. He built the platform, built the following, turned his version of a pipe dream into an actual life, the kind of life where people recognize him and ask for a photo, and he has a system now for how he handles that, which is its own small proof that his pipe dream turned into reality.

I went into that conversation expecting something inspiring, some proof that when you finally reach the pinnacle of success, that on the other side, there’s peace. I had my question ready, the one where I ask about the moment that he knew it was working and he’d arrived.

And he answered that question. But not the way I envisioned it. He got quiet for a second (the kind of quiet that doesn’t translate well on a transcript) and said that he knew it was working the minute he felt the floor move beneath him.

The recognition matters, the numbers matter, the things he wanted so badly matter. But when he reached the pinnacle of success, instead of a feeling of relief, it was replaced by a new hunger. He said once you get there, you don’t arrive. You just want more. The finish line doesn’t disappear when you cross it; it just moves forward quietly, without asking permission. And you’re standing there looking past it toward the next finish line before you’ve allowed yourself to experience the first.

I remember sitting there thinking, “I’ve got to be the only person in this room disappointed by that answer, because I wanted him to tell me it stops.”

I’ve rewritten this column four times this week because of that one sentence. I keep trying to make it into something tidier than it actually is, something with a lesson at the end that you can put on a slide so you can teach others. I don’t think it has a tidy lesson. I think that might actually be the point of this.

Somewhere in the rewriting I thought about my principal. I wrote about her last week, so some of you already know her, the one who told me I would never amount to anything as if she was reading a verdict rather than talking to a fourteen-year-old. I’ve been thinking about the letter I wrote to her years later, telling her I’d graduated with honors. But now I wonder, uncomfortably, if some part of what I’m doing now in my life is still a version of that letter. Not all of it. I don’t want to hand over this whole article to a woman who probably doesn’t even remember my name. But I’d be lying if I said none of it is that. Some small percentage of every flight I book might still be me quietly handing her proof that her judgement of me was wrong.

Here’s what I don’t have an answer for, and that’s just how ambition works. For some of us, it’s like a chase. We’re wired for the chase in a way that other people aren’t. I know people who hit their goal and just rest on their laurels. They get the house, the marriage, the job, and then they exhale. I’ve sat across from clients who seem so settled while I think quietly, professionally, inappropriately: “I wonder what that’s like.”

And then there’s me and apparently my guest, who got the thing, and within a week, it’s not the thing anymore. It’s just the new floor and we’re already looking up. I’m not saying any of this to fish for reassurance because I don’t think reassurance is what this actually needs. I’m saying this because I’ve spent years with discontentment because I feel that always wanting more is something I should have outgrown by now, something a healthy, self-actualized therapist in her forties should not be dealing with.

I have sat across from people, gently walking them toward gratitude while privately lying awake at night wondering why my own gratitude never quiets the needs and wants underneath. I’ve wondered if that makes me a fraud: giving out a medicine I never take myself. I still wonder some nights, if I’m being honest, which I told myself I would be when I sat down to write this.

There’s a saying I fall back on sometimes, that we are meant to be sameach b’chelko, happy with our lot. I believe it; I’ve seen it in real life, seen how it held people up during genuinely dark times, myself included. Yet I can’t fully swallow that notion because some part of me doesn’t want to stop wanting. The wanting is like an engine and if I ever shut it off, I’d lose the one thing that got me on this plane to begin with. And maybe I’d lose something else too, something I’m less proud of, the part of me that’s still fourteen and still keeping score.

Maybe ambition and contentment aren’t supposed to sit together as peacefully as we’d like. Maybe some weeks you get to pick which one is louder. And maybe the people who build unreasonable things aren’t healthier and more evolved; maybe they’re just willing to let the hunger stay loud longer than everyone else. Which isn’t a compliment I’m giving myself. It’s just what I think is true most days, including today.

I don’t know if that’s a different kind of wiring or just a way to romanticize a trait so it feels like purpose rather than what it might actually be. I’m not sure if wanting more the second I get something is a flaw I should be working on, the cost of building something new, or me still paying a debt of compensation to my fourteen-year-old self.

I used to think growth meant eventually arriving at a destination. I’m not sure that’s the whole definition anymore, at least not for me. And I’m suspicious of anyone who tells me it’s supposed to be that simple.

What I do know is that previous version of myself, when I first sat in a studio chair, would never have believed that one day I would be flying to a new city to record a podcast. She would have called it a pipe dream too, same as the woman across the desk did. So, the only honest thing I can offer this week is that I’m not entirely sure I want to stop wanting this, and how ashamed I am to admit that I still want it very badly. I’ll just keep packing, carrying the same small hope that this trip is the one thing that will change everything (even though a part of me knows better than to expect it). Still, I’m hoping it anyway. 

Tamara Gestetner, LMFT, is a psychotherapist and certified mediator based in Cedarhurst who helps individuals and couples navigate relationships, career questions, and the challenges people face in everyday life. She is also the host of the podcast Talk2Tamara. Readers are welcome to submit questions or topics they would like addressed in future columns. Tamara can be reached at TamaraGestetner.com, [email protected], or 646-239-5686.